After a semester of academic reading on aristotle, plato, rhetoric and semitoics, i am happily reading a piece of fluff...

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. It's the Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

I've read the original and i'm not so sure this guy has.... I'm pretty sure he's just watched the movie and re-written it with the characters having to fight zombies AND overcome their pride and prejudice.... but really, who could resist??

Terrible things happen to good people every day.
Consequentially, I am not one of the good people.I am one of the terrible things..

^ Oh gosh! I wanted to read that book so bad!! D: You just reminded me to go do my shopping on Amazon! THANKS! ;D
Have you ever read The Rising by Briane Keene? It's another lovely zombie book with lots of yummy gore action. Awesome plot too.

Oh, and currently I'm reading The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
I put this book down a few months ago and just picked it up again, hehe.. Stoopid procrastination.

4w5.

"We trust the local doctor, we trust the medicine.
Our child gets a scratch, we get our child a brand new head.
We eat what's on our plate, we drink what's in our cup...
We like the shiny TV screen, it spits, we lap it up...
They sing a song, we hum along.
We sing; but we don't understand the words to the song."
-- High As A Horse

This was actually one of my favorite books as a child, but I haven't read it in years. This time, as an adult, I was really struck by the fact that its strongly a Sleeping-Beauty story. (I never caught on that before.) Except the prince is a formerly sickly-looking semi-bratish girl. And the princess is a tantrum-throwing spoiled brat boy. And the fairy is a animal-loving "commoner". The king(dad) tries to protect the princess(Colin), by locking her(him) in ignorance, through detachment- but it is this "protection" which leaves Colin crippled by his fear.

I loves it.

It is through nuturing nature, recoaxing life into the garden that the characters allow nature to heal them (in a new reversal of chopping down the protective briar hedge).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and other stories by F Scott Fitzgerald;

i just finished reading a big collection of Fitzgerald short stories. i liked them, but i sometimes felt like he was praising entitlement. however, he sometimes seemed to be cleverly and surreptitiously mocking entitlement. so i don't know.
and of course he also seems to be in love with the young, ambitious, self-made man. haha, i liked that aspect, but it was pretty amusing.

Originally Posted by Halla74

I'm preparing for battle...

haha, nice.
so is your neighbor overstepping their bounds? or are they hasslin' you?

haha, nice.
so is your neighbor overstepping their bounds? or are they hasslin' you?

I live next to two dinosaurs (thank God my neighbor on the other side is a classmate of mine and is cool as all get out) that are both passive aggressive backstabbers.

They are all "Hi therrrrrrre! How are yoooooou? " And then they run off and talk shit about you other people.

Also, the husband is unecessarily rude to my wife about trivial things, never enough for me to warrant going over there and reading him the riot act, but enough for me to have strategically bothered him for the past year...and he has paid for it...but I am only beginning.

My first act of disrespect was to prune the branches of two huge oak trees in my back yard as high as I could go with a 17 pole saw. What came down from the canopy was ridiculous, massive branches of twisted limbs and big patches of leaves at the ends. I aligned them all in a massive formation in my front yard close to his propery line, but not quite on it. I let them sit there for about 5 weeks, and he huffed and puffed and pissed and moaned, and finally when he shut the hell up, I called the garbage company and had the boom truck come out to pick them up.

This time, my actions will be more long term. He gripes about plants all the time. He has removed almost every plant from his front and backyard as he does not want to deal with them. I have made mental notes of all the plants he hates most. I am designing a bed along my property line with his that strategically has all of his most hated specimens living happily amongst one and other.

Before I put the spade to the Earth however, I need to know the rules, hence the Nolo book, and of course my county's ordinances. I might be mean bastard at times, but I am not a lawbreaker...

haha, well played.
yeah, it will be worth so much more if you follow the 'rules' and do everything in accordance with regulations and ordinances, so that he has no legal recourse left to him. maybe the experience will mellow him out. if not, it still sounds like good times.

i lived in a neighborhood that had this obnoxious woman who was the self-appointed lawn guru. the neighborhood had no regulations on aesthtics - but if your lawn was anything but immaculate grass from house to curb, this woman would be on your case constantly. i mean, she was posting 'citations' on people's property for things like "too many weeds," "patchy grass," etc. she really acted like she owned the neighborhood. i got fed up with it and ripped out all my grass. replaced it with dirt and a cactus garden.

maybe the experience will mellow him out. if not, it still sounds like good times.

Indeed, good times it shall be! I really do hope it mellows him out. I hate wasting my energy on needless bickering with ignornat people. It will be nice to know that he will soon have an opportunity to take out all his aggression on the banana plants, pampas grass, gardenia bushes, elephant ears, tropicanas, and various other odds and ends like succulents and a few seasonal plants that will look like shit the whole year except for a month or two when they are in immaculate bloom. All this is on his side of the house where his kitchen window is. I would pay much money for a "pissing angel" fountain to put in the midst of this bed as a "bird bath."

Originally Posted by Kingfisher

i got fed up with it and ripped out all my grass. replaced it with dirt and a cactus garden.

Your solution was priceless, and very inventive.

She sounds like a real sweet lady.

Ohhhh! You just gave me the idea to re-plant my prickly pear cactus in this bed! THANK YOU! It's been in a plastic green bucket for 10 years. I picked up a paddle of a huge one by a mailbox on a country roard (while wearing leather gloves of course) and threw it in the bucket and drove home. It has been there ever since, and it is now HUGE.